537: Beyond Profits: Building a Life-First Business with Doug Keeling
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Is your business helping you achieve your personal goals, or just financial ones? Doug Keeling, owner of Bad to the Bone Pet care, shares about hiring administrative help and defining team roles. We discuss how to delegate effectively, build trust with your team, and promote from within. Doug emphasizes the importance of aligning your business with your personal values for long-term success. If you want to grow your business while maintaining balance, this episode is a must-listen!
Main topics:
Hiring for administrative roles
Building team trust and autonomy
Delegating tasks effectively
Manager vs. admin responsibilities
Aligning business with personal goals
Main takeaway: “Build a business that fits around your personal goals, not just your financial ones.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the grind, pushing for revenue growth and higher profit margins. But what if we flipped the script? 🤔
As you continue to grow your business, ask yourself: Am I moving closer to a life I love, or just a higher bank balance?Too often, we build businesses that demand all of our time, energy, and focus—often at the expense of personal fulfillment. But true success isn’t just about the numbers. It’s about creating a business that gives you freedom, fulfillment, and the ability to pursue your passions outside of work. What does that look like in practice? 1) ****Creating a schedule that allows for family time and self-care. 2) Delegating or automating tasks that drain you, so you can focus on what you truly enjoy. 3) Saying 'no' to opportunities that don’t align with your personal values, even if they promise financial gain.
About our guest:
Doug Keeling, AKA Doug the Dog Guy, is the owner and founder of Bad to the Bone Pet Care in Jacksonville, FL. Over the past ten years, Doug's team of pet sitters and dog walkers have completed over 100,000 pet care services for over 1,000 families. Doug and his team have won multiple awards, most recently being chosen as the 2023 Pet Sitter of the Year by Pet Sitter's International. Doug is passionate about uplifting and inspiring the pet care industry, and he shares his knowledge and experience on his Doug the Dog Guy YouTube channel. Doug also provides one-on-one coaching for pet business owners, and has the Pawsitive Hiring Course where he teaches solo pet sitters and dog walkers how to hire and grow their team!
Links:
Doug’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/dougthedogguy
Doug’s hiring course: https://dougthedogguy.co
https://www.instagram.com/dougthedogguyofficial
https://www.facebook.com/DougtheDogGuy/
Facebook group for VAs: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/devci3Lxc4d2Mqcj/
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SPEAKERS
Collin, Doug
Collin 00:00
Music. Welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by time to pet and pet perennials. Well, hello everybody, and welcome back as our businesses grow, our life's become a lot more complicated, and there tends to be a lot of things on our plates that we need to get done, and many times we think of hiring for field work and taking care of pets and people's homes. However, one overlooked aspect that I think many of us wait way too long to take care of is actually in the office and administrative assistance. And then how do we grow that position? And what does it look like then to look at manager positions and have a hierarchy within our company? And so we're really excited to have Mr. Doug Keeling on the show to talk all about growing administrative assistants, manager positions, and how to make the most out of these in our businesses and for our clients as well. Doug, I was looking back, it's been about two years since we've had you on the show. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but a lot has, a lot has transpired in those two years. So for those of our listeners who haven't gone back and listened to that episode or haven't been caught up with everything that you're doing these days, tell us a little bit more about who you are and all that you do.
Doug 01:14
I can't believe it's been two years that's wild. I know the time just flies. Yes, it does well. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm really excited to talk about this topic with you. I know this is something that I am very passionate about, because I'm a dog guy, I'm not an office guy, I'm not a business guy. I want to be out there with the dogs. So hiring out my administrative tasks was one of the very first things that I did in my business. It was actually the second hire that I ever made, was for administrative help. And I think that a lot of business owners kind of get stuck in this mindset of thinking that they have to do it all themselves forever. And I'm here to tell you that that's not the case. So I'm really excited to talk about this. Well,
Collin 02:05
why do you think many of us put off hiring administrative help specifically?
Doug 02:11
I think one thing is that it's just not really talked about enough. I think we in the Facebook groups and these different platforms, we hear a lot about hiring pet sitters and dog walkers and people to go out in the field, but it's really rare to hear somebody talk about this. And I think it's because, um, there's fewer businesses doing it, you know, and and I think one of the reasons for that is that it can seem overwhelming. It can seem scary, you know, and that's true with any aspect of hiring, whether we're hiring for pet sitting and dog walking or these administrative tasks, it can all feel a tad bit overwhelming at times, and that's okay, you know? It's okay to feel those feelings, but as our as business owners, I think it's important to always push ourselves to learn new things, to try new things, test new things, and kind of reinvent who we are as business owners and reinvent what our role entails as the business owner, you know over time. Yeah,
Collin 03:24
there's a lot of identity work in that, as we look to bring people on, it's, it's because, yeah, I, maybe I'm the only one out doing dog walks, and then I hire somebody to do those, or help with those. Well, then what am I supposed to do? Well, I'll just hire all of I'll just do all the route planning, and I'll do all the back end administrative paperwork. Well, if I hire somebody do that, you're right. Going, well, then what do I do? Why am I even here at that point, at that point? But instead of, we have to, you have to reimagine, going, Okay, well, maybe I'm the go out in the community kind of face, and maybe I'm the, you know, I'm the vision casting, or I'm in these other roles. I'm leading, I'm managing the actual people and being okay with as that grows and adapts over time and what our business looks like and what we and what roles we want to take on.
Doug 04:06
Yeah, exactly. And one of the really cool things about hiring administrative help is that kind of the world is your oyster, you know. And I try to urge everybody to view their business as this painting, you know, and every decision that you make in your business is a stroke of the brush on the canvas. And all of these decisions, the smaller ones and the bigger ones, they all come together to paint this big, beautiful picture that is your business at the end of the day. And when we're thinking about hiring, especially for administrative roles. You know, you can create a fully comprehensive role that's full time that covers all of the administrative tasks. Or you can offer somebody one two hours a week to just focus on your social media, or just focus on categorizing your email. I mean. And you can design this to be whatever you want it to be. And I'll tell you, you know, when I first started my business, I knew that I wanted to be out in the field playing with the dogs in the sunshine. I wanted to be out there on the trails. I didn't want to be sitting in front of a computer. I did not want to be on the phone, and I as my business grew over that first year, I really realized that I'm good at the marketing, and I enjoy the marketing. I'm okay and somewhat enjoy, like New Client Onboarding, but I really hate talking to the on the phone. I really do not enjoy replying to emails, and that's just not what I want to spend my time doing. So my very first administrative person, you know, she started with just three hours a week. I brought her on as a sitter and dog walker first, and once I was really comfortable with her in that role, you know, I told her I don't want to answer the phone and I don't want to respond to emails. So if I could just give you 30 minutes a day, five days a week, so two and a half hours a week, you know. And she had another job too, so she would come home in the evenings from her other job. She may do a pet sit here and there, and then she would open up our email and respond to any inquiries that came in and any missed calls that I didn't answer during the day. She would call those people back, have discussions with them, and get them on boarded and, you know, capping it at this two and a half hours a week, 30 minutes a day, five days a week. I was paying her minimum wage at the time, and that added up to, I think, 25 or 30 bucks a week, and all of a sudden I didn't have to worry about answering the phone. And that was worth every bit of that $30 and then some to me Well, and
Collin 06:59
that's an aspect of this too, that I think, is another reason why administrative work can tends to get pushed off. It's because it's we can view it as a non revenue generating position, right? It's easy to hire a dog walker, a pet sitter because or a groomer, or whatever, because they're making money for us. They're in the field, they're out walking dogs. There's money exchanged for that service that I'm going to profit off of, I can that helps benefit me, pays for everything going on, but an office administrator like, my goodness, now that's that seems like a really big luxury, because answer emails, but that they're not, they're not in our brains making us money. They're just spending money to get tasks done. But what you said is going, Yeah, but I didn't have to do it. So, like, how much would you pay to not do these things? And that's and that's where that value, because then we're freed up to go do other stuff.
Doug 07:53
Yeah, exactly. Now that being said, I do think it is really important to know how much money you have to work with. And I urge everybody to look at all of their income and all of their different expenses and truly figure out what your profit margin is on a per visit basis, and then you can really ask yourself, Okay, how many visits do I need on the schedule to know that I can afford to pay this person for five hours a week or 10 hours a week, whatever it is that you want them to do, you really need to start with knowing how much money you have to work with. And that's why I started this original person at, you know, 30 minutes a day, five days a week, because that's how much money I had to part with. I couldn't really part with more than $30 a week. But as the business grew from there, I was able to slowly build on to those administrative hours. All of a sudden that 30 minutes a day, five days a week, was a full hour six days a week, and it just kind of slowly grew and evolved over time, and so did her task to do within that time. No, originally, she was just returning missed calls and replying to emails, that was all she was doing. And then I had her start to actually help me with scheduling. We use time to pet for all of our scheduling and invoicing and visit tracking and everything. And she started helping me with some of that. Then she started helping me with some social media posts and other things down the line. And one thing, I can ramble and I can go down a million different rabbit holes with this. So cut me off when you need to. Cut me off. You're good. I think one big mistake that I made in the beginning was that I didn't really look at when I needed administrative help the most all I thought about was. Was, I don't want to do these tasks. These tasks need to be done every day. So I'm going to pay her for 30 minutes five days a week. But over time, I realized, you know, we don't really need that help. Tuesdays or Wednesdays for my business, historically speaking, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are really slow, and I can handle all the administrative things myself, even the tasks that I didn't want to do. You know, I can handle those fairly easily on those days, but Fridays. Fridays are always our day of the week, so I know that's a day some extra eyes and ears, on the phone and on time to pet and those types of things. I just didn't think about that at the beginning, and I didn't really even have a good enough idea of what our regular schedule looked like. But with time to pet, you know, we can pull a report that will create kind of a histogram showing our busy both by visit number and by revenue, and it really allows you to come at these decisions with a sense of data and facts, rather than just saying, Hey, I don't want to do this. Please do it.
Collin 11:19
You're right, because many times we do get to that point where we're so frustrated, where we're just like, what ever like and and it ends up, unfortunately, what can happen is then, if there's not a whole lot of thought, and we're just running away from something, as opposed to towards an ultimate goal, we get frustrated with the outcome, because then we may find, oh, we're still doing administrative tasks. We're still doing this stuff anyway. Why is this other person over here just burning money and wasting time? I guess this isn't for me, and we take that back, and we move on and kind of grumbling to ourselves. So really, it sounds like as a business, going okay, like, what am I frustrated with? When am I frustrated with that, because, you know, that's actually also something that when we think of this, just, you know, thinking back towards, you know, hiring a dog walker or pet sitter. Many people hire because they don't want to do evenings anymore, right? And they go, Oh, I don't want to be out till 10 o'clock. Can I hire somebody to that? Oh, I don't want to be on weekends. Can I hire somebody to do that? Thinking through in that exact same way, for the administrative tasks, when am I getting all those phone calls? When do I get those requests? When do I have more people out in the field? When do I When do I have the most headaches? So we know when we need the most help, because, you know, as a business like so, for people listening to this, this may all sound like, Oh, this is kind of nice. Do you have any thoughts on like, when a business should begin thinking about it's probably time to bring on help with the administrative tasks.
Doug 12:46
Yeah, you know, everybody's going to be a little bit different on this. And you know, when I brought on my first admin person, I didn't technically need the administrative person, but again, it was out of a personal desire, and that's something that's really important to me, is to build a business that doesn't just hit your financial goals and your entrepreneurial goals, but it actually fits around some of your personal goals and your personal wants and needs at the same time. And you know that kind of goes back to my painting analogy, where everybody's gonna have kind of a different opinion on this, but with really starting with knowing what your numbers are and knowing what you can afford, and if you can afford, you know, a couple hours a week at minimum wage, and that is worth it to you, then go right ahead and do it. Your very first hire could be an administrative person. You know, you don't have to necessarily wait, and even if you're not sure if you're if you want to do this in house, or how to do it in house, yet, you can kind of start with dabbling with some virtual assistants. You know, there are VAs out there that specialize in managing your software and time to pet and things like that. There's, there are other VAs that specialize in running your social media or or handling your new client onboarding process. There's a whole Facebook group. It's, I think it's a virtual assistance for the pet care industry, or, yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, there's a there's so many different ways to go about this. And you know, one of my very first mentors, back in the day, I was talking to him about making this decision, and I wasn't sure if I was making the right decision, or how to go about it, all these kinds of things. And he sat me down, and he said, you know, Doug, you're going to be better off focusing on the tasks that you're already good at instead of trying to improve on the tasks that you're not good at, just the. Focus on the ones that you're already good at, get better at those and those other tasks that you're really not good at, and the ones that you're not passionate about, those are the tasks that you need to hire out. And that's why I came at this first admin role of, okay, I'm not good at and I'm not passionate at answering the phone and emails. So those are the tasks that I'm going to offload
Collin 15:21
first. Yeah, and that's a good point too. Of going you don't always have to do it internally, or hire somebody internally, or give these tasks to somebody who's a dog walker, pet sitter for you already, because if we're not good at it, we might not feel like we have the skills to teach invoicing or to teach email reply or email etiquette, or to teach the back end of our software. So hi, finding somebody as a virtual assistant who's already doing this, who's super equipped and knowledgeable with the systems that we're already using, it really is then just a Okay, I'll actually have to teach you. I may have to give you some scripts for maybe how I like to sound, or maybe some photos and stuff to respond back with. But beyond that, I'm not having to do a deep dive into why this button does this particular thing and this particular software, which can help us go okay, even less for me to worry about, because if I have to now train somebody on how to scoop litter, and then I have to train them on how to reply to an email, oh gosh, that sounds not, not quite so, Not like a lot of fun.
Doug 16:21
Oh yeah, yeah. And this is, this was so important to me when I first started making these administrative moves in my business is for anybody that doesn't know my story. I started my business when I was 19 years old, and I brought on my first team member right before my 20th birthday. And this first administrative person, you know, I was right around that time frame, and I didn't know what I was doing. I was 19. Not only did I not understand what I was doing on the business side, I didn't know what I was doing with my life in general, I was a total mess. And I tell everybody that I learned everything the hard way. And I knew that at this point in my business, I was trying to hire, and I knew that I wanted to build a team, but I didn't know how to interview anyone I was I was 1920 years old. I had never managed anyone. I had never hired anyone. I hadn't gotten to those classes in college yet, and this, this person, she came on as a pet sitter and dog walker, and then I had her start to help with some of these administrative tasks, and I knew that she had done Human Resources type work for our local airport, And they, I think they cut her hours or something. And at the same time, I had had this instance where I was interviewing someone, I knew that I wasn't asking the right questions, and I knew that they weren't taking me seriously in the interview because I didn't know what I was doing. So I was able to go to this person, and I said, Hey, you're already helping a little bit with the administrative tasks. You know what it's like to be a pet store and dog walker, and you have this previous experience and this previous skill set doing human resources for a large company. Can you take over interviewing, because I don't know what I'm doing, and can you teach me how to conduct these interviews? And she was ecstatic to do it, and knowing that I didn't have to train her, that she was actually training me how to do these tasks, I think that was such a light bulb moment for me as a business owner, where I had that conversation with my mentor thing to hire out the task that you're not good at. And then I had this lady come into my business and be able to do these interviews that I didn't know how to do. And it kind of just opened up this whole window of possibilities and opportunities for me. You know, moving forward from there,
Collin 18:58
have you heard of time to pet. Dan from NYC, pooch has this to say, time to
19:04
pet has been a total game changer for us. It's helped us streamline many aspects of our operation, from scheduling and communication to billing and customer management. We actually tested other pet sitting softwares in the past, but these other solutions were clunky and riddled with problems. Everything in time to pet has been so well thought out. It's intuitive, feature rich, and it's always improving. If
Collin 19:24
you're looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confession with your assistant that you've got hired on. And you know, thinking back to that time, how did you go about adding responsibilities to that? I think you explained a little bit about how you're doing emails and phone calls, and then we're scheduling needs, and we're doing some other stuff and social media beyond that. Was that a conversation you had with them and asking them, Hey, are you interested in this? Do you want to do this? Did you just kind of know, Oh, I'm tired of doing this myself. What was that like? Yeah.
Doug 19:59
Yeah, that's something that's really evolved and changed for my business over the years. And, you know, back then, it was very personable. A lot of conversations saying, Hey, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I don't like to do this. You have some experience? Would you like to help me do this, you know. And it was really a two way street, you know, and kind of crafting this role just one task at a time. And it's very slowly evolved and grew. And I said that I first started her at 30 minutes a day, five days a week, and I think over the course of about two years, she eventually got up to, I think, 10 or 15 hours of regular work a week, you know, and then it kind of, then the role really shifted and changed it from there now, at this point in my business, I have exact task list for each role. I have task list for each day of the week, each week, you know, then there that way. It really makes delegating these tasks a lot easier, and it's not so much of a conversation, but that's something that really had to evolve and change over time. And I really urge everybody to know that this can be done a million different ways and, and it's great to be able to build this type of relationship with somebody and utilize their skills and their experience and and it's okay to tell your team, especially when it comes to roles like this, it's okay to tell them, This is my first time doing this. I am figuring this out. We're figuring this out together. You know, it's it's okay. And I urge everybody to be to be honest. You know, the worst thing you can do is try to create this role and put tasks on their list and and act like all of your T's are crossed and all of your eyes are dotted when they're not, because people will see through that, and if they start seeing through that, that damages the entire relationship,
Collin 22:13
yeah, because, you know, they look to you, right? You're bringing on a team. You want to be working together, obviously. But if you can't be honest enough to say, I don't really know, I'm trying to figure this out, I need your help with this. They're not going to be likely to come to you with when they have issues or they have concerns, or they're going to start going, well, how can I trust what this person says whenever this doesn't work out right? Instead of just throwing out an answer to get them off your back and say, I don't know, just click the three, you know, click these blue buttons or whatever it's like. Well, that's not actually helping them. So being able to go, I need to learn this too real quick while we work together on this. And if you have questions that me know so I know who to go, take this to, and so on and so forth. But you know, with you then going, Okay, well, I'm gonna have one on one conversations with this early person, leaning on their skills developing this, knowing that we're I can just make this what I need and and you may find, and I think it's it's important early on, and just with every person you bring on in any role, being able to say, here are the expectations for this role. I think that that's just being clear and kind to that person, so that they know, is this something I want to do? I know sometimes we've had conversations with with existing team members about, you know, adding administrative roles or tasks to their to their plate. And man, Megan and I can get super excited about possibilities and what that looks like. And then we start going 30, you know, 30 steps down the road and talking about all sorts of things and stuff, and they're like, Oh, I was just hoping I could help, you know, with, like, scheduling or something. And I not, I don't really want to do social media. And we're like, oh, okay, well, yeah, that, you know, it helps just having that conversation. So, you know, okay, like, what? What can what skills is this person actually interested in utilizing for me, instead of me just forcing everything on them and then wondering why they're not happy or they don't get that particular work done.
Doug 24:06
Yeah, yeah, I think you hit on something that's really important here, that you know, it's okay to kind of start this relationship with having these conversations and and building the role to fit, you know, their skills and what they want to do to help your business and what you need to offload. But once you've had those conversations, you do need to set some parameters for this role and for the tasks that they are going to be doing. This is something I learned this the hard way, you know, because when I brought on this first administrative person, I was very hands off, and I was very like, I need help with this. Can you please get it done? Just do it however you want, and can do it. And I learned over time, through inconsistencies and through. Stakes and through different things happening that you got to have KPIs that can be tracked. You know, there's a right way to do things, and then there's a wrong way to do things. And I always tell my team, you know, here's my SOP, here's my guide with all the parameters to complete this task, and if you make a mistake, no big deal come to me. We'll talk about it. I promise. I've made the same mistake, probably worse than you have, you know, and we'll move forward together. We'll figure this out. But I chose you to do this role and to do these tasks, because I trust you, so as long as you follow these basic parameters that I have laid out, I want you to make decisions. I want you to take ownership over these tasks and know that I've got your back at the end of the day, and because I mentioned SOPs, and I know that this is a big topic that can also be very overwhelming. I want to say that, you know, I look at our our SOPs and all of these different documents as really living, breathing documents there, they will never be completed and they will never be perfect. You know, these are things that you can tweak and change and add to and remove things from every single day, and you should be constantly evolving these documents to match how your business is evolving and how your goals are changing and how the labor market is changing. Change is the only constant that we have in life and in business. So we should view our documents, our SOPs and all these things with that same mindset
Collin 26:50
and developing SOPs for administrative roles is also daunting. Going, oh, man, how do I actually route plan, or how? What is it like for me to schedule? What is my thought process? How do I put the pieces of this giant puzzle together? Or, again, whatever that is for you and why you're needing help. You know, I tend to always go to the administrative as far as like, scheduling and route planning, because that tends to be a big thing for what we do. But as you've already mentioned, Doug, it could be just responding to emails, it could be responding to phone calls. It could be, you know, sending birthday wishes to clients, you know, in in through your software or texting, or whatever that is going, what does that actually look like? And just thinking through and so you do have to put pieces of that together, going, Okay, well, maybe I need to get the person some scripts of things that I always say. Maybe I need to get them a shared Google Drive for where certain documents are going to be so they can reference maybe I can we do have to put a few of those things together just to make it function, but it just starts with us going, how do I do this? So whether we're recording ourselves on loom, you know, that's what I do a lot of that these days of I'm just put loom on my computer, and we're just going to do a screen grab and recording. But then what I love is then you can strip the audio out of that, throw that into chat GPT these days and say, Hey, take the relevant portions of this and write an SOP for how to schedule. And it works really well.
Doug 28:19
I so wish that loom would have been around 10 years ago when I made my first admin hired back then, you know, I was handwriting all of this like in a notebook, and then I was telling her, Okay, you type it out. You know, I hand wrote it for you now with with loom and AI and chat GPT and all these different tools that we have at our disposal makes things so much easier. As far
Collin 28:43
as pay structure for this, are you paying at the same rate as you do for the dog walking, the pet sitting for these particular employees? Or, you know, what's that setup like?
Doug 28:53
You know, when I first started with administrative help, I paid minimum wage, which was the same as what I was paying, you know, for pet sitting and dog walking. It was all pretty much minimum wage. So it made payroll really easy for me, because they could do an hour of admin work. They could go do a dog walk right afterwards. It all flowed together and pieced together on the payroll side, very seamlessly. Now, over time, as these roles have changed and as the tasks have changed, you know, I can tell you now I have some administrative tasks and some administrative helpers that are at minimum wage, and then I have some that are higher, but they are, they're all paid hourly, you know, I I have seen debate in the Facebook groups about paying them like per the job or per task that may work with on a VA model. But if you're using your own employees, you know you really need to pay them hourly. My personal opinion there, but I. So, yeah, the overtime, you know, and especially once, I think there's a big difference between, like, being an administrative helper and then being a manager and then being a leader. These are three very different mindsets, and these three different roles require three different types of people, three different tasks list, and really at the end of the day, three different compensation models as well. You know, if you're if you're having somebody sort through your emails and answer the phone, yeah, you that's a minimum wage task for most businesses, I would think, but then when you start having them actually help train your new employees and have some oversight over your team, you know that's a much more valuable task that requires more experience and more training on the admin side and so on and so on. So that's going to deserve a little bit higher compensation. But then once you get into, you know, further down the line with a full on operations manager, you know, that's really, you know, a much higher skill set that is going to require a higher compensation.
Collin 31:17
Well, since we're talking about managers right now, let's, let's go into that because we've, we've talked about administrative assistance and kind of helping with the back end, and whether whatever we want to do that, and setting that up for our budget and our time and when and how we need that help, as far as then kind of going to that next level of a more managerial position. Do you look to raise up the administrative assistants, administers into those roles, or do you look outside to bring people in? Kind of, What's that process like?
Doug 31:51
I'm a huge advocate for promoting from within. Um, I bring everyone on as a pet sitter and dog walker first, and I, I have a tiered system for my team where we have five tiers everybody. I don't care what your previous experience is, starts as a tier one team member, and everybody gets fair, equal treatment this way, and really sets the stage for everything that is to come afterwards as well, you know. And I have currently in my business, I have 32 employees, and I have several different people that help with different administrative tasks, and I never offer anyone the ability to take on some admin hours until they're at least a tier three team member. Because this means by the time they've reached that tier three status, they've been with me for about a year, and they've really proven themselves to be an excellent pet sitter and dog walker and pet professional, and I am confident that they understand what, not only how to be a pet care professional, they by that point, they've been with me long enough to know my leadership style, to know my future goals for the business, and to really understand more of the inner workings of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it that way, which means when I start having, when I start asking them to help with some of these administrative tasks, we're really all on the same page. There's a foundation of trust already built there. I think that is really, really important. And moving forward, you know, I do have two full time administrative people. I have an operations manager and a client relations manager. They are both full time admin people, and they're both still out in the field as well. And that is something that is very important to me in my business, is that we are all still with the pets. I don't want anyone on my team to ever lose sight of the real purpose and meaning of what we do. You know, you may be focusing on administrative tasks all day, every day, but that's not why we're here. We are here to make a difference in people's lives by helping with their pets, and we can never lose sight of that. I think once you get fully, completely out of the field, it can be really easy to forget that and forget what it feels like to make a difference in a family's life and to win over an anxious cat and to do these things like that needs to be fresh and in the very front of our minds always
Collin 34:48
well, because it impacts, should impact everything. It should impact the scheduling, the route planning, how we respond to clients. It should impact how we change. To the training protocols, and we update the handbooks and the manuals and the policies. All of that is completely meaningless if we lose sight of the pets of the people that we're caring for as well. And so I do like that you still have them in the field, at least some aspect of UK you're in charge of doing operations oversight. You're seeing the comings and goings of everybody and how the movement is going client manager, I'm sure, is just taking the calls, doing the new client inquiries and that kind of thing. But that's all great. We still need to be out in the field so we don't forget what this is all about.
35:35
Yeah, exactly, losing a client
Collin 35:38
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Doug 37:15
Yeah, once you start to get into more of the management type of role, it's really important that they are able to be a self starter and be able to take initiative and be able to kind of make some decisions on their own. And that's why I wait until they're at least a tier three team member, because that gives me enough time to see just through their normal pet sits and dog walks and their interactions with me and the rest of the team, I can tell. Is this person a self starter, or is this somebody that I have to stay behind and push, you know? Is this somebody that can problem solve and sort out an issue on their own? Or are they calling us for every little thing you know? And if it's somebody that is taking initiative, that has really good time management, has really good communication skills, you know, and all their T's are crossed, their eyes are dotted, all of these good things, then that is the type of person that I can go to and say, Hey, would you like to help with some administrative tasks? And would you like to help with some managerial tasks, you know, later on down the road, after that, but I'm really looking for some of these kind of natural, more innate skills, just through their pet sitting and dog walking before we ever even get to that scenario. And then, you know, when the time comes, you know, I have them start with helping with some basic administrative tasks. I'll tell you, I had somebody hit their tier three mark with us just last week, and she has been excellent. And she is, like the perfect example of a self starter, somebody with initiative, somebody they can problem solve on their own, and I know from her previous experience that she has written some books. She's even written some movies and things. And so as soon as she hit her tier three status with us, I took her out for coffee two days ago, and I said, Hey, you have this experience, I can see that you're a self starter and have initiative and everything I need help with our email newsletter and with our blog and some of the writing things I need, some of our SOPs and some of our internal documents tweaked and updated. From an actual writing standpoint, you have this experience, is this something that you would be interested in helping with? And she was like, Oh, I would love to. I mean, she was so excited. And I laid out the parameters. I said, okay, here are the main projects I need you to focus on. Here is the max amount of hours that I can give you to complete these projects. And we'll kind of. Go
Collin 40:00
from there? Yeah, I like that aspect of going, here's the maximum number of hours. So that really helps set expectations of this is not an unlimited thing, right? This and and ultimately, things have to get done, right? We can't just be spending 1015, hours a week thinking about how we would like to tackle these. We do have to make some progress on these things eventually, and that it's not a bottomless bucket and but also taking it to them and presenting it as, here's what needs to be done. Here are the skills that I see in you. Are you interested in taking this on so that you know you are going to get an enthusiastic person who's going to be taking that unwillingly and not in a begrudging manner as well,
Doug 40:40
right? Right, yeah. And, you know, so I bring everybody, all my admin people, on kind of with just starting with some simple tasks after they've reached tier three, and I've seen these qualities within them. And then as their tasks grow, and their administrative hours grow over time, you know, and they start to turn into more of a manager instead of just an administrative helper, then I can push them to take more ownership in the tasks and support them in different ways. I think that looks a little bit different for each different person on my team, everybody kind of needs, needs something different. And everybody's personality is different. Everybody's skill set is different. And I think coming into it knowing that there is no one right answer, that this is a very flexible and fluid thing, and that I myself have to be constantly evolving and learning and pushing myself as well. No, I had never hired or managed anyone so before, and then, you know, I figured that out, and then figuring out how to turn administrative people into managers and managers into leaders. That's something that I have really had to learn myself, you know, and it's something that I'm constantly trying to learn and get better at, you know, over time. And I really have those conversations with my managers, you know, when I when I made Brenna our operations manager a few years ago, I sat her down and I said, Where do you think that you need the most help? Where do you need your skills to improve the most? And most people know that answer about themselves, even if they haven't actually admitted it to themselves, and they haven't put in the work to you know, go down that road themselves, yet they probably know the answer in the back of their mind. And Brenna did know the answer. She said, You know, this is where I know I'm good. This is where I think I could use some more help. And I said, Okay, well, I'm going to sign you up for this course. I'll pay you for the hours to do this course. I'll pay for the enrollment and everything. And that should give you the basis that you need to kind of go from administrative helper to manager and so on. And it's just, it's a really evolving thing.
Collin 43:09
And I think that that as the as the owner, that can also be incredibly frustrating, because often we like cookie cutter approaches. We like, oh, well, I just need to do X, Y, Z, and that's how I turn a pet sitter into admin assistant, into manager, into leader. It's just, just tell me the seven step program I need to go through, Doug.
43:30
It's a reason only it were that easy,
Collin 43:32
I know. Just keep just let us know when you get that cracked. I would appreciate it. But right? Going no, because what we're dealing with people right? We're doing people with have their own strengths, their own weaknesses. That's why they're here. That's why it's wonderful to work with them and going, how do I if someone has an interest? Okay, I know I wasn't perfect. I'm not perfect at anything that I do. I need to be a little bit better. So where do I go for that? Now, as the as the employer, as my business people, look to us. Go, well, help me, right? Help me get to where you want me to be, help me, help me in whatever way. And that's where that partnership does come in. Okay, here's this course. I'm sure you guys talked about what the course was. Its benefits, we know, you know, and then work through how to continue to implement that in your business. And it's a never ending process as we look to add responsibilities, because each responsibility we give is is a lot more weight for that person, and we need to make sure that they're ready to take it and we're ready to give them the support they need to take it
Doug 44:29
right exactly, exactly, you know. And there's so many different ways to have these conversations and to go about the these different things. And one thing that's been really beneficial for me is I have an end of shift form for all of my admin people. It doesn't matter if they're just writing one blog post or if they're handling all of the scheduling for all of my team for the day, whatever it is that they are doing, there is an end of shift form that they have to fill out. It's a really. Simple Google form. You know, Google Forms is free and to use, and I have different forms built for these different roles. So like my manager, my operations manager, her end of day form is more higher level questions. You know, did we meet these goals, why or why not? Did you reach out to this other business owner? What was the outcome of that? Why or why not? You know. And then for you know, like people that are helping with blogs and social media and things like that, it'll have a slightly different questions on the form, but it's things that allow you to track what is being done, what is being done well, and where the improvements can be made. What I do on my end is, every Monday, I have a management meeting. And what I do is I start that meeting by going through all of the end of shift forms from the previous week. And I look for inconsistencies, I look for mistakes, and I look for the tasks that were not completed. And that's what we focus on in this meeting, is, why were these things not done? Why were these things not done in the way that I wanted them to be done? And what can we do to ensure that this doesn't happen again? And and sometimes it is, well, I didn't have the support that I needed. Okay. Well, that is something that I have to know as the business owner and as the leader of my team. If you don't have the support that you need, you know, I need to know that, and I have to rectify that. That's that's my job, yeah.
Collin 46:40
Well, it could be like, you know, maybe you want to ask all of your previous week's clients for a review, right? Well, okay, there's one way to do that. You could look at the previous schedule. You could scroll through each little day and click on each little color and go, Okay, is that has that let me go cross reference or and that could take all day to do that, right? And it you don't actually get very far. And then those that task stops getting done on a consistent basis. Well, if that person didn't know that, they could run a report in the software to just pluck out the clients who were just last week or, you know, or whatever, you know, in whatever way, well that's going to save them a lot of time and say, oh, right, that's a tool that I didn't show you how to use. I'm really sorry. Let me, let me put together a video, and let's, let's do a training session on that real quick so we can get back on track with this. Because that's, that's the part where, yeah, we people need to have autonomy, but they might know all the ways to do something. They may be just doing the way that works for them and going, well, let me kind of show you a couple different ways. Or let's do this different training course. Let's get something new, or maybe let's have a conversation that that these tasks that you're doing and how you're managing those maybe, maybe that's not for you right now, let's find something else to put on your plate that's a little bit better fit,
Doug 47:52
right, right? And then, once they're comfortable in this role, and you're having these conversations and everything's flowing along, I really like to give my people, the ownership and the ability to actually go and tweak these SOP documents and do all of that, you know. And that's something that in almost every one of my weekly management meetings, you know, Brenna or Kelly or one of my admin people, they'll say, Oh, actually, I had this happen with a client. And it led me to think that maybe if we said this in a slightly different way, or if we sent this email at this time instead of this time, it could make this whole relationship flow better. So I end up kind of learning from them, and it really becomes a more symbiotic relationship. And it's really, really a beautiful thing, right? Because
Collin 48:41
I I talk about this a lot with our with our team of going look Megan and I have our own set of experiences over the last decade plus of doing this. But that doesn't mean we've experienced everything. And now the business that we're running today doesn't look anything like what we did over a decade ago, so we're going to encounter all sorts of weird stuff. And now, with all the employees we have in the field, we're just multiplying the factors of learning at this point, of new inputs into the company. So of course, things are going to change. So that's where that communication is really important to have back. And it's important at the field work level. It's also critical in the office work level, because now, if things are even more complicated, even more insane than they than they were when it was just us or with maybe one or two employees. So for you, I did, I did want to know, like a day in the life of a manager for for bad to the bone, kind of, what does that look like?
Doug 49:40
Yeah. So my operations manager, she is full time. She's salaried. She's been with me five years now. She's been Operations Manager for the last couple of years. She's incredible, and kind of her daily schedule seems to be. I like her to be monitoring the team and kind of on call from 8am to 8pm ish Monday through Friday. And she's able to kind of build and make her own schedule throughout the days and weeks to whatever fits her the best. But again, I have a set tasks, set task list that she has to complete for each different day. So as long as her tasks are getting done each day, everything's good. And you know, for example, typically in the in the morning, her first task is to check time to pet and ensure that, you know, any requests that came in overnight, we're getting those fulfilled first from existing clients, and once we've accommodated our existing clients and answered any questions that may have come in overnight, then you know, at the same time, she's checking in with our team. You know it, are all of our team members at their morning visit, and she's checking their quality, you know, are they walking the right walking path? Were they there for the right amount of time? Where was there written update in their photos, up to our standard, you know? And that's something she's keeping an eye on all throughout the day and giving them guidance, you know when and where they need it on those these things, and then as new potential clients sign up or contact us during the day, she has up to four hours to get them accommodated. I want every new client, phone call sign up form on our website, whatever they should know if we can accommodate them or not within four hours of their initial contact. So as she's keeping an eye on the team and keeping an eye on our existing clients, she's also keeping an eye out for these incoming, new clients, and knowing that she has these parameters around them. She has up to four hours for new clients, and she has up to two hours for existing clients. And I mean, I could talk all day about the different parameters and things that I have in line for these different tasks. And, you know, that's kind of a whole other conversation. But every day does look a little bit different, you know, every Wednesday she does payroll, but that's only a Wednesday task. You know, in Fridays, I know that we're gonna have more pet sits and dog walks on the schedule on Fridays. So that day she's really has less behind the scenes tasks and more, you know, actually monitoring the team and staying in contact with the client, type of task, you know, and those more behind the scenes type of tasks with I have her I write, currently write our weekly email newsletter, but I want her to tell me what the newsletter should focus on based off of what she is seeing. Our clients experience that way, our newsletters are always very relevant to what is actually going on with our clients. So our email newsletter is sent every Thursday morning. So she is to give me that topic that's like a Tuesday task for her, so that way I can write the newsletter and have it ready to go on Wednesday. Each day is different, yeah,
Collin 53:20
but it's taking those tasks and spreading them out right across each day, setting them up for again, that when do I need this by what's the deadline for this? How much lead time do I need going into these things and working together on that? So knowing that, yeah, there's all these individual tasks that are daily, there's weekly, there's monthly, there's quarterly, there's you can break them down across all of that and make sure that they are put in a system somewhere, whether that's in a task management software or in a calendar or whatever, like, I would recommend a software at that point if you're doing if you're doing a level, we're not just passing back post it notes, okay, Please. But also just knowing that that that too, grows and adapts. Because maybe you want to be involved in a new charity function, or maybe you need to be doing something to get a word out about a new, you know, service that you're offering, like all of that's to grow and change. And where those meetings come really important too, I'm sure. Yeah,
Doug 54:16
yeah. And every week, we're kind of setting different goals. You know, I have a quarterly all hands meeting where, you know, kind of the whole team comes together and we say, you know, here are our wins and losses from the last quarter. Here is what I would like the business to look like, you know, by the end of the next quarter. What can we all do to help support each other towards these goals and what metrics can we set as a management team to make sure we're all pushing forward to in the same direction together, you know? And that's where you know, having these different management roles have a little bit of flexibility in them is really important, you know. Because. What Brenna may be focusing on is our operations manager may change from week to week, really, based off of these goals, and our progress towards these goals. And right now, you know, I always say that I want us to be able to accommodate at least 80% of the requests that are coming in, and if we ever get to a point where we're not accommodating at least 80% of incoming requests, then Brenna's role as manager, she is to drop whatever other projects she had on her list, and her new number one priority is hiring. If we cannot accommodate at least 80% her new priority is hiring, you know, I'm kind of again, putting the parameters in place so she that she knows how things are supposed to flow, but then giving her the ability to move things around and make it work for her skill set, her schedule and everything
Collin 55:58
else. Yeah, and that that, like you mentioned at the very beginning here, that takes a lot of trust, that takes a lot of trust to know. Here are the parameters, and I'm going to trust you to execute on these. I'm going to trust you to implement what we've talked about. And that is really the difference there between the administrative tasks and that managerial role of that administrative task is here I'm telling you what needs to get done, and here's a set task list. The managerial role. We're really giving a lot of that more autonomy. They're making those decisions, they are implementing, but they're also helping us plan and move forward and do that stuff as well. So it takes a lot more long term relationship with that trust knowing that, yeah, this person is going to be deeply involved. I'm going to get this person, like, passwords right to stuff. Like, I got, I've got to be setting up brand new accounts for them. Like, that's, that's, that is a whole level of deep integration into our company that that can be kind of uncomfortable for a lot of people.
Doug 56:56
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, this like aspect of trust and like sharing your passwords with somebody can be daunting. It can be really overwhelming. And I just want to urge everybody to remember that even if the worst possible thing happens, you can and will bounce back from it, everything will be okay at the end of the day, you know. And you know, I've been in business for 10 years now, and I've had it all happen, anything and everything that you can think of. I've had it happen over the years, and I'm still here, and I'm still smiling. So if I can do it, I believe in you, and I know that you can do it too.
Collin 57:41
I love that, Doug, thank you so much, and I we got it. We got to end there. I got to get but no, I do appreciate you coming on, Doug, and walking us through how to start introducing this into our business, and starting with those little tasks, knowing that we can offload some of our plate, working to keep it in house, to build that trust and to build that consistency, and then leaning into those people and growing them within the company and giving them more responsibility as they earn it and as we need it as well, so that we can be having that business that gives us that balance that We look for in our life, and it's not all consuming, and we can actually be creating things that allow people to be living where they're most efficient and where they want to be, and how, how beautiful and wonderful is that to be able to give that to somebody if they want it. I do know that this is a pretty big topic. There's a lot that we didn't get to. So if people are interested in in following along with you, learning more about hiring and bringing good team members into your business in the right way, how best can they do that?
Doug 58:54
Yeah, so I have a YouTube channel. It's youtube.com, forward slash Doug the dog guy. I have over 200 videos on there showing you all the ins and outs of being a full time professional pet sitter, dog walker, pet transporter, and ultimately pet business owner at the end of the day. So I got a lot of free content and how to guides and everything else on that YouTube channel. And then if you head over to my website, which is Doug the dog guy.co.co, then I have a full hiring course that I have built out has over. I think we're approaching 20 hours of video content. I'm constantly adding to it, upgrading it, making additions, and all this good stuff. So you have 20 hours of video content walking you through everything that you need to go, everything that you need to know, to go from solo pet care provider to Team Leader and broken the course down into three modules. The first module is all about the preparation. So. Setting the foundation before you hire. Second module is all about the hiring process itself, and then the third module is all about leading and retaining your team members once you found them, and you and Megan were so awesome and even submitted a bonus lesson, like an hour long lesson. You guys have your whiteboard. It's incredible. So if you guys have not gotten enough Collin and Megan content here on the podcast, come join in the course, and you can see them there too.
Collin 1:00:28
I had forgotten it was an hour long. I'm sorry. We'll try and keep it shorter.
1:00:33
It's incredible. It's incredible. Barbara,
Collin 1:00:36
well, Doug, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure. Good to get caught up with you and to walk through this topic that I know a lot of people are starting to think about and work towards in their business. So I'll have all those links in the show notes and on the website, so people can get connected and start following along today. Doug, as always, an immense pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
1:00:58
Thank you, Collin.
Collin 1:00:59
My biggest takeaway from my conversation with Doug was when he said, to build a business that fits around your personal goals, not just your financial ones. What kind of life do you want to live? How do you want to be spending your time if you want to be out in the field, going hard every day, seven days a week, and taking care of people's pets, do that and live that life if you want to be on the back end, scheduling, routing, taking care of all of the notes and the intake and all of that, do that hire to fit your personal needs and the life that you want to live. There is no one size fits all hiring regiment or structure of a business. And that's the beautiful thing about running your own business. Being a small business owner, you get to make it work for you. It may take some trial, may take some error, a lot of error, honestly, but bring people up and alongside you. When you hire somebody, let them know what your intentions are and what the vision that you have, so you can start seeing if they can fill those roles and help the business in whatever way you need them to. We want to thank today's sponsors, tied to pet and pet perennials, for making today's show possible. And we really want to thank you for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
1:02:16
Bye.
